Locked-Room: The Double Turn by Carol Carnac (1956)

Adrian Delafield, once a great-in-demand painter of the Victorian era, now lives a secluded life at Firenze at St. John's Wood, looked after by his devoted maid, Miss Trimming. Trimming who is a religious fanatic keeps him away from 'the evils of the world'; one of those evils apparently being Delafield's own daughter, Virgilia Delafield, …

Boston Brahmins: The House that Died by Josephine Gill (1956)

The Bellamy family is the upper crust of Boston. When Grand Aunt Elizabeth's secretary-companion, Anne Chisholm, loses her footing on the rear-staircase and comes crashing down, the family rings up the hospital to send an ambulance. However, the line being busy, a police ambulance is rather sent to the house. With the ambulance comes the …

The Elusive Aunt: Always Say Die by Elizabeth Ferrars (1956)

The trouble was that the relationship went back so far and was woven so deeply into both their lives that she did not really believe that it would ever be possible to escape from it entirely. During the blitz, scholarly Laurence Delborne asked his housekeeper Violet Gamlen to bring her niece, Helen, to the relative …

Four Novels by Miles Burton

Miles Burton is one of the psuedonyms of prolific GAD writer, Cecil John Charles Street, more famously known by another of his pseudonyms, John Rhode. This year I made a calculated effort to read the Burton novels. THE SECRET OF HIGH ELDERSHAM (1930): The first appearance of Burton's detective, Desmond Merrion, the novel begins well …

Three Vintage Mysteries

With little time to spare nowadays, here are brief reactions to reading of three mysteries. BATS IN THE BELFRY by E.C.R. LORAC (1937) The question that perplexed me after finishing Lorac's Bats in the Belfry was that how could a novel that began so promisingly, that had me gripped almost its entire length, end on …

The #1956 Club: The Diehard by Jean Potts

"You've had your cake and et it too, all these years." Lew Morgan is the undisputed king of Turk Ridge. Once a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, Lew has made it to the top, by his enterprise and industriousness, as well as by marrying Olive Whitt, whose father had owned everything in …

The #1956 Club

From tomorrow, I shall be participating in the 1956 Club, part of a bi-annual reading event organized jointly by Simon @ Stuck in a Book and Karen @ Kaggsy’s bookish ramblings. This time round, I've chosen books that will help me in the various challenges I am participating, so here are the books that I plan to read: …

Forgotten Book: Death in Cyprus by M.M. Kaye

For a long time I knew of M.M. Kaye only as a writer of historical romances like The Far Pavillions, and The Shadow of the Moon. I had no idea that she had penned a series of murder mysteries set in exotic locales. In 2010, I read one of them - Death in Kashmir. The …